Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Why even have the All Star Game?

According to CNNSI.com, even though they were announced as being part of the 11 voted All Stars for the MLS All Star Game vs. Chelsea on August 5th, New England's Clint Dempsey, Shalrie Joseph and Ante Razov of Chivas USA will not be playing in the match. This is due to the fact that MLS has scheduled a match for the August 6th match between New England vs. Chivas USA. The August 6th match is part of a doubleheader with the FC Barcelona vs. Chivas Guadalajara match.Why even have the All Star Game if you are going to have the players voted in sit it out for a match that should never have been schedule the next day? At least MLB pauses their schedule for 3 days so that there are no games the day before or after the All Star Game. This is bush league MLS. The only reason the Chivas USA vs. New England Revolution match is even scheduled for that day is because Barcelona are dictating the date and Garber & Co. feel that they must have MLS clubs involved somehow. You want MLS clubs involved? Try having the Catalans play against a MLS club? Why only the Red Bulls? Red Bull tell you to only allow them to face them?I really question alot of decisions that Garber & Co. make. Like not getting more friendlies between Mexican and MLS clubs. You claim you want to see more involvement with the Latin American community? Try having the clubs that they want to see play our clubs. Try having Soccer United Marketing (SUM) the marketing arm of MLS, actually get European clubs to play MLS clubs.If they want to raise the profile of MLS, having European clubs face each other in our backyard, or face Mexican clubs, in our houses does nothing but say that you don't think we can challenge them. The All Star game is nothing but an auction display for our best players. If Garber & Co. really wanted to showcase our best against the best of Europe, which is what Garber has said over and over is the idea behind the Euro clubs playing our All Stars, then just schedule the match to be against the top ranked MLS club. It would be simple to do, just select the club with the most points at July 4th, the same way you pick the coach. Last year, San Jose would have played Fulham. This year DC United would play Chelsea. Did you learn nothing from the 5-0 destruction that Real Madrid gave your select team last year? It's like you all live in fantasy land or something.

2 Comments:

Well, the problem started well before this. Apparently someone at the league office didn't notice that players who compete in the World Cup get 30 days off after their last game.

So, the original July 29th date doesn't work anymore.

Before that, though, the Barcelona/Chivas friendly had already been scheduled and it Chivas USA desperately wants to keep that game as it's going to be a huge moneymaker.

Just having gotten back Clint Dempsey, Steve Nicol's not going to give him up for this game and as much as Bob Bradley likes Ante Razov, he's not going to give him the day off to go to Chi-town for the ASG when he really needs him to win an important league game.

It works out since the All-Stars will be basically D.C. United who, if they had just picked the Black and Red to face Chelsea, might have had a good shot of taking the Blues out.